One reasonably could ask whether this is the moment to write a book about the potential of Catholic Social Theory to contribute to Australian politics and policy. After all, the Church is still struggling to come to terms with decades of child abuse, hardly a recommendation for social potential. We currently also are attempting to make sense of a Plenary that is both confused and confusing.
As Monty Python might have remarked, ‘What has the Catholic Church given us in social theory? Nothing!’ That great theologian, however, would be wrong. For better or worse, the Church is an institution, indeed the institution. Institutions get a bad rap these days, but properly understood, they are capsules of values.
What this means is that the personnel of an institution may be appalling, but the institution and its values remain intact. In the secular world, for example, we may believe that all judges are pompous asses, but still believe in judicial independence. We may opine that all legislators are overpaid idiots, yet cling to parliamentary sovereignty, and so forth.
Like the laws of the Medes and the Persians, the fundamental social values of God’s Church changeth not, regardless of massive failure by its servants. As my mother was prone to say, if you want evidence of the divine inspiration of the Catholic Church, just ponder its survival despite the Papal Pornocracy of the Middle Ages.
Our own challenge is that we live in a world, particularly in the context of government, that literally is starving for basic values to guide their policy choices. Before the launch of the book Shadow of the Cross I was rung by a high-ranking, public servant and atheist friend who was excited that anyone was even going to posit a set of basic, public values.
This value lacuna is fundamentally dangerous to our society. Without basic values, policy-making lapses into mere transactionalism: I have been told to build a dam there, so I will, regardless of environmental or indigenous concerns.
At its worst, this phenomenon intensifies. It becomes soulless game-playing. I have been told to achieve a particular policy outcome, and you are trying to stop me. My objective is to beat you, regardless of the consequences. Usually, this tendency is accompanied by name-calling, and false characterizations. You are a leftie. I am fascist. He is a lunatic.
"This value lacuna is fundamentally dangerous to our society. Without basic values, policy-making lapses into mere transactionalism."
If we are honest with ourselves, any of us who have served in public life sometimes have displayed this tendency. We have exulted over policy triumphs and the fall of enemies, when it is all mere pride. We need to be careful of this tendency within the Catholic community, as well as in government. Church debate is not a game, nor is it resolved by name-calling.
We need to be assiduous here. The Truth Justice and Healing Council often is held up as model of governance, but if I had heard the phrase ‘It’s all about the optics’ one more time, I would have been ill. Around the Plenary, we already are damning those who disagree with us as ‘reactionaries’ or ‘demolitionists’, the latter a term of my own, for which I can argue only on the basis of self-defence.
I was most struck by this lack of public values at a meeting of Australia’s Vice Chancellors to discuss the latest atrocity of some government or other. I argued that we should go back to the fundamental principles of universities and argue from there. Much shuffling of feet followed. My impression was that half of us thought it always was a bad idea to resort to principle, while the other half had no idea what the relevant principles were. No wonder politicians hold universities in contempt.
Of course, it would be possible to generate numerous elements of Catholic social teaching in writing a book. I chose the four which I take to be fundamental: the dignity of the human being; the common good; solidarity; and subsidiarity. All are easy to say, and to find appealing examples of practice. But each poses genuine challenges for committed Catholics, of whatever hue.
Take the common good. It is not mere utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number. Of course, people should be fed, educated, have proper health care and be allowed to vote. Yet the common dignity of human beings is at the heart of Catholic social teaching, not in operative applications, however worthy. All humans — however vulnerable or socially useless — remain human, and are to be valued as such. This applies to the elderly, the dying, the unborn, the sick, the poor and even criminals. As Catholics we are called to defend them. We cannot plead inconvenience or calumny as an excuse.
A Jewish friend once told me after attending a Mass that he finally ‘got it’. ‘You Catholics are in love with life. You don’t care whose life, the condemned criminal, the unborn child, the old person gasping their last breath’. It was a good summary of the dignity of the human person.
The notion of the common good is closely related to the value of human beings. In one sense, it is the generalization of the individual proposition, but the Catholic notion of the common good goes beyond the incidental adequacy of a society. It is moral, as well as a material proposal. People should live in a ‘good society’.
Sometimes, it is easy — even enjoyable — to argue for elements of this good. Most of us confidently would demand better treatment for refugees, and recognition of indigenous people. But sometimes it is much harder. I was amazed by the number of people who vehemently supported the execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Surkurmaran in Indonesia. I was boggled by those — including Catholics — who supported the unjust imprisonment of Cardinal Pell on the basis that ‘he must have done something’.
"Whatever the internal divisions of the Church in Australia, however, one can only wonder at a policy oeuvre driven by Catholic social teaching: refugees admitted, the indigenous recognised, prisoners treated humanely and the sick respected."
From a Catholic perspective, a society acting in the common good cannot support abortion or euthanasia, however popular these causes may be. By debasing the moral quality of that society and its respect for life, these cannot be for the common good.
Solidarity may have the ring of Latin America and Che Guevara, but it is fundamental to Catholic social thought. Ultimately, it is about connectedness. The actions of every person affects, at whatever degree of remoteness, every other person. Therefore, we should act with interests of other people firmly in mind.
The connection with the dignity of the human person and the common good are obvious, but solidarity goes further. It demands that we be with the poor, the sick and the dying, not merely around them. It requires an intimacy with suffering that many of us find emotionally very difficult.
Subsidiarity is the final value considered in the book, and the one with which — as a constitutional lawyer in a federal state — I am most familiar. Subsidiarity demands that decisions be taken at the lowest possible effective level of governance. This reflects the inherent value of the human being, but also the common good, as decisions made at a local level are most likely to reflect local needs and values.
Subsidiarity as a principle is rather popular these days, as it is thought to encourage local experimentation and independence. But one needs to understand its inherent limitation: decisions should be taken at the lowest effective level. Just as the Australian States do not have navies, dioceses do not decide such issues as the ordination of women.
Some may be surprised that ‘synodality’ is not included as a fundamental value of Catholic social teaching. It is, after all, the flavor of the month. One reason is that synodality, unlike the other values discussed here, is not easily generalizable to politics and policy. Frankly, not one Catholic in a hundred would have heard of it prior to the last two years.
Second, its meaning has become debatable, and to some extent consciously distorted. Properly understood, ‘synodality’ involves all elements of the Church — Bishops, clergy and laypeople — working together to discharge their distinct roles in the service of God and His Church.
But in Australia, particularly in relation to the current Plenary, it has been twisted to mean a form of ecclesial democracy, in which the role of Bishops in particular is greatly diminished. This not what Pope Francis means when he uses the term, but words are the playthings of proselytizers.
Whatever the internal divisions of the Church in Australia, however, one can only wonder at a policy oeuvre driven by Catholic social teaching. Refugees admitted, the indigenous recognised, prisoners treated humanely and the sick respected, rather than conveniently terminated.
We could do worse.
Greg Craven is an Emeritus Professor and former Vice Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.